


The True Birth of Sophie Deveraux

by Telaryn



Category: Hogans Heroes, Leverage
Genre: A Legend Gets Her Start, Backstory, Crossover, Family, Family Drama, Family Feels, Gen, Headcanon, Obscure Characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 09:06:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17159192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telaryn/pseuds/Telaryn
Summary: Hardison accidentally uncovers the story of the real Sophie Devereaux, prompting a certain dark-haired grifter to share one of her most closely held family secrets.





	The True Birth of Sophie Deveraux

**Author's Note:**

  * For [meils121](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meils121/gifts).



> Drawn from your request for back-story on Sophie. I'd started developing a head canon a long time ago that our Sophie was the granddaughter of Peter Newkirk from the television show Hogans Heroes. Your prompt reminded me of a certain young, French, recurring character on that show and it was off to the races!
> 
> Thank you for everything you've given to the Exchange! We've loved playing with you!

As long as they’d known each other, Sophie would have thought the mysteries of her past would have stopped fascinating someone like Alec Hardison ages ago.

 _And yet…_ “Where did you get that?” she asked, stunned to see an old, sepia-tinged photograph dominating the hacker’s bank of monitors. Other files surrounded the picture, mostly text reports he’d likely lifted from the UN, the OSS, CIA…her mind began spinning with a seemingly endless list of letter combinations.

Nate lightly touched her arm, and in spite of herself Sophie flinched. Swearing under her breath at letting herself be caught so vulnerable, she turned to see genuine concern in her lover’s eyes. “Is that..?”

She didn’t answer him right away, unable to remember in the moment whether she had told him the story herself, or it was something her grandfather would have revealed. Realizing ultimately that the whys probably didn’t matter anymore, she finally nodded. “The real Sophie Devereaux.”  
********************  
Her first actual con had been a variation on the Beijing Tea when she was twenty-one. Working in concert with a young man she had met the summer after she’d finished secondary school, ‘Sophie Devereaux’ spent the better part of six months swindling hapless tourists in Piccadilly Circus out of their travel money. It was exhilarating – a rush like nothing she’d ever experienced – and while she knew better than to push a good thing too far, Charlotte Newkirk had got a glimpse of what her future could be like that year, and she liked what she saw.

She liked it very much. 

“What started you on this?” she asked Hardison, coming to the edge of the long, thin desk that bracketed the hacker and his equipment. “This can’t be for a job.” She’d only been able to meet the real Sophie once before she died, and that had been three years before joining up with Nate and the others. Her grandfather had scared ten years off her life by sending a friend in the local constabulary to collect her from the Circus one unusually clear day close to Christmas. “I’m certain this is just a misunderstanding,” she had protested in her best French accent. “If you would just allow me…”

“I already told you, Duchess,” the man had drawled, completely unimpressed by her acting, “show me your passport and I’m sure we can clear this all up.”

It was a rookie mistake, one she wouldn’t have been caught dead making now, but in her early twenties Charlotte couldn’t conceive of the need to prove she was who she said she was. It was only once the man’s car pulled up in front of a familiar looking apartment building in a modest neighborhood in London’s East End that her panic began to ease and she realized that while she was likely still in trouble, it was going to be a very different type of trouble than being collected by a constable in the middle of committing a crime would have suggested.

“Basic housekeeping,” Hardison was saying, back in her present. “I have web crawlers that I send out every couple of weeks searching for information – our respective status with the international legal community, old enemies, old lovers…anything that could potentially grow into a problem.” He gestured at the woman on the monitor. “This showed up as part of the French government’s ongoing celebrations commemorating the end of World War II.”

 _Figures,_ Sophie thought, smiling sadly at the image of the woman who had been at the heart of most of her favorite childhood stories.

The woman her grandfather had loved.

“Sophie Devereaux was eighteen when Paris fell to the Nazis,” she said finally. “She joined the Underground after her father was reported lost during the battle of Dunkirk. In three years she went on well over a hundred missions – retrievals, rescues, infiltrations – anything where the last person the Germans would suspect responsible was a teenaged girl.”

“Takes guts,” Hardison said. He indicated the monitors with a small jerk of his head. “One of the files says she was questioned by the Nazis.”

Sophie nodded. “Three times. Each time she was rescued by my grandfather’s unit.”

“Sophie’s grandfather was stationed with a top-secret covert ops unit based in Germany,” Nate said, and it was the first time Sophie realized that Hardison wouldn’t have any reason to know who Peter Newkirk had been.

 _One of the best grifters I’ve ever known._ Her grandfather had been her muse…her inspiration. And on that perfect Winter afternoon, he was the only one with the power to see her forward or stop her future in its tracks. Heartbeat racing, Charlotte had knocked on the door to his fourth floor apartment, only to have her world kicked out from under her when a woman answered the door – a woman who was at the same time familiar to young Charlotte Newkirk and…not.

The woman her grandfather had always called “Tiger” had smiled on seeing her. “Ah, c’est la petite voleuse! Bienvenue!” Bowing low, she gestured Charlotte into the apartment with a sweeping, theatrical gesture.

Most of her attention still on the newcomer, Charlotte had nevertheless gone inside. Her grandfather was seated in his favorite chair next to a cheerful fire. 

Her first read of his expression was disturbingly vague.

“What I remember most vividly,” she told Nate and Hardison, “was that he was upset with me for being sloppy. I know he had to be worried about me getting caught and whatever blowback was going to come from my mother for me going down this path in the first place, but professionally?” She smiled wistfully, “he was embarrassed that I had been caught out by a friend of his.”

“Mademoiselle Sophie Devereaux,” her grandfather had announced once Tiger had secured the door and taken the chair opposite Peter, “may I present my granddaughter, Charlotte?”

Always sensitive to the emotions surrounding her, Charlotte clocked immediately that Tiger had scowled on hearing herself introduced as Sophie Devereaux. “You are impossible, Peter. Twenty years in his grave and still you refuse to make peace with the fact that I chose LeBeau instead of you.”

“I was making a point,” her grandfather had countered, clearly and obviously annoyed now. “The point being that after all the stories she has wheedled out of me over the years, Charlotte should have known better than to use the name of a living person for something like the Beijing bloody Tea!”

Charlotte had bristled automatically at the accusation. “I played the odds!” she snapped. “You have to admit they were heavy in my favor.”

He’d always been her favorite relative – the kind, doting grandfather with the slightly wicked edge, the one person she could share her secrets with, and the one whose company would always wind her mother up an acceptable degree. Looking into the eyes of Peter Newkirk in that moment, she suddenly saw the man who had spent three yeas of his life playing a long con against an incredibly dangerous mark – with his life in the balance if he lost focus for one moment.

 _”Do you really want to stand there and discuss playing the odds with me?”_ She could almost hear his real challenge, even though out loud all he said was, “And yet, here we are.”

A long, protracted silence fell across the room, broken finally by Tiger. “Mon Dieu! Peter, I think we could all use a whisky before this goes much further.”

With a small huff of effort, her grandfather had got to his feet. Charlotte started to protest that she could take care of the drinks, but the words died in her throat at the glare from her grandfather, backed up by Tiger’s tiny headshake. “Do not mistake me, Charlotte,” Tiger had continued, once Peter was busy behind the bar. “I did not start this business in order to make trouble between you and your grand-pere. I was worried when I saw you in the Circus, that was all; the rest was his idea.’

“There was a part of me that still wanted very badly to defend myself,” Sophie said to Nate and Hardison. “But, for all that he could be a ruddy bastard sometimes, Grandpa had always been honest with me.”

“And he was right,” Nate said, startling a self-conscious smile out of her. “You said so yourself,” he added, holding up his hands against her taking offense.

“And he was right,” Sophie echoed, nodding.

Once the whisky had been poured and distributed and Peter had resumed his seat, most of the tension had bled from the room. “You could do worse than take Sophie as your role model,” her grandfather had allowed. “A natural born grifter, but she always used her talents for the greater good.”

Tiger had laughed outright at his words. “Say that I pick my marks with more care than you ever did,” she corrected him. “Ma chere,” she said, focusing on Charlotte, “I never chose to be a grifter. I had grown up wanting to be an actress. It was Hitler, avec ses loups, that made my decision for me.”

“I’ve thought about being an actress,” Charlotte had told the other woman, after taking a careful sip of her whisky. It was the first time her grandfather – or anyone – had acknowledged her adult status in this particular way, and she wasn’t going to waste it. “I just don’t know where to start.” She dropped her gaze – abruptly self-conscious in front of this woman she only knew from stories. “And I’m afraid I might not be very good.”

Her grandfather shook his head. “Not a word about the fit her mother would throw – and how Jeannie would blame me for the whole mess!”

Tiger had tossed off her whisky in a single swallow. “A fit she might throw, Peter, but can you say she would be wrong about where to lay the blame?” Turning back to Charlotte she said, “From what I saw at the Circus, ma petite, you have the knack. The difference between acting and grifting really is only a question of what side of the line you ply your trade.”

“I am poorly equipped to tell you where to begin a career as a British actress,” she went on, “but perhaps I can make you a gift. Let us work together to craft your first persona.”

“She stayed in Britain another three days,” Sophie told Nate and Hardison. “I visited her at Grandpa’s flat every afternoon and she showed me how many little details went into creating an iron-clad alias. Births, family connections, where they went to school, how they felt when they received their first kiss or made love for the first time.” She smiled again, recalling the gifts Tiger and her grandfather had given her on the last day of the woman’s visit. “Tiger gave me permission to use her name, but only if swore never to use it to harm innocent people.”

“You know my stories, ma chere,” she had said, kissing Charlotte on each cheek. “If you would wield my name, do me justice.”

“Before I could start crying, my grandfather gifted me with the best set of papers money could buy. He said it was to start me off on the right foot, but I don’t think he wanted me to embarrass Tiger any more than I already had.”

“So this Tiger,” Hardison said, “she was the one that really got you started?”

Sophie shook her head. “My grandfather got me started. Tiger made me Sophie Devereaux.”


End file.
